THE SERBIAN RETREAT.

Taranaki Daily News, 19 May 1916, Page 2

THE SERBIAN RETREAT.

AN EXPERIENCES. 50,000 DIE IN MARCH 0? POUR DAYS. The abject horrors of the flight of the Serbians have just beer, graphically described by Henry Hallcr, formerly of the Fifth United States Cnvalry, who was one of the few Americana in that pitiable episode. He declares that during the journey to Podgorit?a, in Montenegro, in a four days' snowstorm, more than 50,000 men died. "They died so fast," he said, "that they fell 'every few yards all along the road. The waggons and the varts went right over their bodies. Nobody thought of trying to turn out of the way, and there were so many they could not but drive over them. The roads were fill! of mudholes. At one place I saw no less than 17 horses dying in one immense puddle; unable to pull themselves out. I saw hundreds and thousands of ragged men, with their feet swollen too much to wear shoes or to walk on them, crawling along for miles on their hand? and knees through the blinding snow, finally stop, ping and .lying scon afterwards. They never nm:U> any appeal for help, for it would have been useles* to have done so. Besides, they were too far gone to know what they were about, <-r that they were dying. Their last effort to keep going was merely a mechanical operation. Of course, the great, mortality all along out route wa« due to the barren nature of the country ve wert traversing, with no shelter for but a comparatively few of us. There were even no forests where we might have lolled trees and built temporary quarters. Our flics for the most part were small, with barely enough wood to hi.it water."

Haller, who was on a visit to Budapest when th» war began, enlisted in the Austrian army, and was serving as a bugler when, six months later, he was taken prisoner by the Soibs, and then was eventually marched with 75,000 other Austrian soldiers across the mountains into Albania, av.rl "there turned loose on the shores of the Adr.atic to fight for life against cholera, fever, and starvation." ' i

"We were supposed to have started on that retreat with a Se'b army of over 200,000 men and about 75,000 Austrian prisoners. Not many moie than 150,000 of the whole lot got over the mountains. It was not because the Anstrians or the Bulgarians pursued us, Isojirever, with much activity. The,men ditd meroly'be-' cause of duease, hunger, and exhaustion.,' The worst part of the journey began at, the Albanian frontier. The' Albanians; have in times past been batily treated by. the Serbs, and (hoy took this chance to square old scores. They shot, killed; robbed, and murdered at our every step of the way. Fjr instance, at Linn, some' Serb officers and a company of stragglers 1 on horselm* wore met in the middle of 1 - the road by a few peasrnts and ordered' to give up thc ! r h'.rses and their monev. It was "plain lurhway robbery, and the'v refused. The peasants ran away, and within a couple of mfnutc-s more 'than a thousand shots were tired out of the bushy hillside, kilpng mist of the Serbs. "The food problem \v:is tprrifie, even in Albania. . A half-pound of bread was sold at 10 dinars (about eight shillings). As T had n li!tlc money" at Sturza I bought live po.uids of olia beans., Had I not been able to get these beans I would to-day be a dead man. I had just said to myself. 'I can't go anv further,* when I wiranaikd a peasnrt woman to sell me the beans. I ate beans twice a day, making a sort rf soun out of them, putting in a little salt.' At that I was luckier much more than the fellows who had to boil harness leather for five or sty.- hours in order to make the hot water fast... like soi.p. I saw men act like savage*, eating r.ioces of brown paper.

There ,vna, perhaps, nrt more than 2,0(10 women amonß tlie retreating horde with us, ami it is si fact worth recording that they were kindly trtate/l and given whatever comforts were available by sol. diers who were otherwise dead to "every feeling. I have seen such men. gaunt staggering along, half-naked, with a few pieces of cloth lor shoes, unable to speak with barely strength lefs to stop near a dying horse and cut a stringy steak from its flank, rtraialitcn up for a moment near one of th~ women'* carts and smilingly tender their last mouthful of food to some of tVe women. I have seen time and time again son e freezing soldier take off hia overcoat and force it upon some one of these women. I have also been almost ashamed to look upon her shivering body as lie made, the offer. Then he would search along the road until he was able to strip some dead man of his clothes to replace that which he had so freely given.'' What Haller regarded as his most remarkable experience was the sight of a mad soldier dying from starvation. '•Clothed only in a ragged undershirt,' he was running barefooted down a snowcovered Albanian road, ctrnight as an arrow, bellowing as he ran.'' he said. "He ran on and on down that, road, seein" nothing, yet wonderfully avoiding stum" bling over the bodies of other dead and dying soldiers ar-.d the meat-stripped carcases.of the army horses which blockaded the way. Suffering intensely as I myself was, f turned and watched this strange figure. At last a half mile down the road he pitched forward, and as T passed him later I saw be wa-- stone dead." '■' Other than that incident, there is one that will stick in my memory as long/as T live," added Haller "That was "the hanging of a Serb, mother by the Austrian troops before T was made a prisoner. We were marching across a rough country near T.ochnizter when we stopped near a wayside but at its spring to get a drink. Colonel Heiii, of our regiment, also went to get a drink. As be arose from the spring a ?hot came from the hut. That shot wu, lired bv a woman. She stood at the door, an old shotgun in one hand, a baby in the other. One of'the captains ordered her to be hung. There was nothing else to do but execute her. As u rope was placed about her neck and she was led to the nearest tree, a!' she said was this, in a hard, cold voice: My husband is a soldier. I, too, die for Serbia.' She made no appeal. She did not cry out. We left her body hanging there in the wind. The baby was picked up and sent to the nearest prison camp to be eared for." Through the efforts of Mr. Robert Haverick, representing the United States among the Austrian pri-oners, Haller was rescued from starvutii n at Durazzo and later Ambassador J'age, when in Rome, interested himself in the case. Haller is now back in America and says that he has bad enough of the war, at least for a time.